Dynamic menu boards offer a ton of useful functionality for restaurants. They make it incredibly easy to add, edit or delete items from a menu. They also engage customers while they’re waiting in line and often help to speed up the ordering process to reduce wait times.
Digital signage is the technology that makes dynamic menu boards possible. But it’s not the only thing that digital signage can do for your restaurant. There are tons of different ways that your restaurant can benefit from investing in digital signage.
In this article, we’ll tell you all about how:
- Digital signage can improve your customers’ experience
- You can use digital signage to accomplish your business goals
- How UPshow will empower you to get the most out of your digital signage solution
Improve your customers’ waiting experience
Waiting in line is never fun. But digital signage can help you improve the experience for your customers. There are lots of different ways that you can use it to make your customers’ wait feel a bit better.
For example, you can use your digital signage as a form of entertainment for bored customers. You could display fun trivia questions or share interesting facts about your restaurant and the region that it operates in.
You could also use your signs to tell your customers exactly how long they’re going to need to wait for their food. Doing so will help to give your customers a more concrete sense of progress as they get closer and closer to enjoying their meal.
Some restaurants have multiple places to order, which can sometimes be confusing for customers. If that’s you, then you might also use your digital signage to direct your customers exactly where they need to go so that they don’t end up frustrated and in the wrong place.
Highlight your new menu items
As long as you use it correctly, digital signage can be a tremendous form of in-store advertising for you. For restaurants, this often means using digital signage to get customers excited about new (and potentially more expensive) menu items.
The best part is, you’ll get to advertise exactly what you want your customers to see at the very moment that they’re deciding what they’ll eat at your restaurant. You couldn’t pick a better time than that to get an ad for a particular dish in front of someone.
There are lots of other things that you can advertise with your digital signage as well. For example, you could use them to highlight your loyalty program and encourage customers to sign up for it. Or you could advertise gift cards and promote various types of upselling.
Build engagement for your social media
Social media has become increasingly important for restaurants over the past few years. That trend should only continue as platform utilization increases on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter and more social media platforms emerge. If your restaurant’s social media isn’t where you want it (or even if it already is), you can use digital signage to improve your numbers.
The best way to do this is by displaying your social media feeds on digital signage in your restaurant. The more customers that see your posts, the more that will feel inspired to follow you and engage with them. This can have the net effect of helping you expand your audience, which could lead to a nice increase in revenue.
You could even highlight posts that your customers have made about your restaurant on your digital signage. Doing so will incentivize them to share about your restaurant online, which is basically free advertising for you.
Entertain customers with streaming video entertainment
Keeping your customers entertained while in-venue is essential to the long-term health of your restaurant. One way to do that is by displaying streaming video content on some of your digital signage. By using your digital signage in this way, you give your customers something entertaining to focus on while they wait to eat their meals. This can make your wait times feel much shorter than they are.
For example, if you use UPshow to manage your digital signage content, you’ll get immediate access to more than 500 channels of OTT entertainment. You could show your customers regional sports, local news, television shows or even viral videos. And the best part is, you’ll be able to display customized ads for your restaurant in-between this content instead of providing free advertising for another business.
Strengthen your brand image
Your restaurant’s brand matters a lot. It’s integral to how your customers and the broader public think about you. Having a well-defined brand image matters because with one, your restaurant will stand out and stick in the minds of members of your target audience.
Digital signage can help you build a stronger brand in several ways. That’s because you can use your signage to display images, text and videos that constantly reaffirm the identity you’re going for.
For example, if you pride yourself on being a family-run establishment, you might highlight pictures of your team laughing and smiling together.
Or, maybe you want people to think of you as the restaurant that gives back. In that case, you could highlight some of your recent charity work to create a favorable impression in your customers’ minds.
Attract more attention from passers-by
Digital signage can also be an effective way to grab the attention of people who walk by. If you’re on a street with some foot traffic, you can put a screen in a window that faces that street.
Then, you can display eye-catching content on your digital signage to get people thinking about your restaurant as they pass by it. This could come in the form of interesting visual displays, fun trivia facts or something unique that no one has thought of yet.
You might even use digital signage to offer walk-in discounts at certain times of the day. This could help you entice new business when you’re at your slowest.
This strategy gives you an automated way to start advertising to people who are just passing you by on the street. Using it could lead to a nice boost in revenue for your restaurant.
Keep customers informed
Your digital signage is also a great way to keep your customers informed about things that matter. Since your customers will be looking at your screens anyway, intersperse informational updates around the other content that you’re displaying.
For example, you could share an upcoming update to your menu. Or perhaps you’re changing your hours soon and you want to let your customers know about that in advance.
Regardless of what you want to share with your audience, digital signage makes it super easy to do. You just create a quick graphic with the information that you wish to convey and then add it to your rotation.
So, how do you get started with digital signage?
Getting started with digital signage can sometimes feel overwhelming if you’ve never used it before. But it’s simple — especially if you already have internet-connected screens in your restaurant.
Essentially, digital signage systems are made up of three things:
- One or more screens with internet connections
- Digital signage management software
- An internet-enabled device that you can use to manage the content you display
That’s it. Just get those three things set up and you’re good to go. That being said there are two key things that you’ll have to decide while setting up your digital signage system.
The first is the type, quantity and locations of the screens that you’re going to use. It’s important to make sure that they’re easy for your customers to view and that you have enough of them to share your content with everyone inside of your space.
Picking the right digital signage management software is also really important. Doing so is the only way to make sure that you’re able to display the exact type of content that you want on the schedule that’s perfect for your restaurant.
UPshow will help you unlock the full potential of your digital signage
As you start thinking about which digital signage management software is best for your restaurant, we encourage you to give some consideration to UPshow. Our platform is ideal for a wide variety of restaurants because we enable you to completely customize your content display schedule.
With UPshow, you’ll be able to easily set up a dynamic content display schedule that accomplishes all of your goals. Then, once you’ve created your schedule, our platform will automatically run it for you. You can just add new pieces of content when you have them and let us do the rest.
But don’t take our word for it. Give UPshow a try for yourself to see exactly how much you can benefit from it — and how much revenue you can drive.
